County wins, unions lose Supreme Court ruling

Macomb County government won a state Supreme Court ruling that if it lost may have cost it hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in pension payments to retirees.

The high court announced Wednesday that it ruled 4-2 (Justice David Viviano recused himself) in favor of the county, circuit court and the former Road Commission over three unions in a dispute regarding a 2006 decision by the Macomb County Retirement Commission.

The commission altered the actuary tables for married retirees who choose to provide survivor benefits to a spouse. The table was altered from 100 percent female to 60 percent male/40 percent female that it had used for 24 years to bring it in line with the table used for unmarried retirees sans a survivor. It resulted in reduced pension benefit payments for affected pensioners who likely number in the hundreds.

The retirement panel made the change effective in July 2007 in a 4-3 vote, saying it made both groups equal.

Advertisement

The unions protested the move, saying it should have been bargained and was unfair. The unions — also including UAW and Michigan Nurses Association — won at the Michigan Employments Relations Commission and state Court of Appeals in split decisions.

But the high court reversed the appeals court.

“This vindicates the retirement commission,” said county attorney George Brumbaugh. “We carefully looked at whether we had to collectively bargain this.”

Donna Cangemi, president of Local 411 of the American Federal of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents about 800 workers, said she was disappointed but not surprised by the ruling. She blamed a conservative, anti-union Supreme Court.

“I was fearful we would (lose) because of the makeup of the court,” she said. “I feel we had a strong case and won all the way up. I still believe this was a violation of the contract. It was an arbitrary decision by the retirement board.”

Brumbaugh said the decision was not anti-union because it also affects nonunion employees.

The change has reduced monthly payments by up to maybe $200 for the highest paid retirees, Cangemi said.

“It would’ve been a real hit for the county if it would have lost,” she said. “They would’ve had to reconfigure pensions.”

Cangemi said AFSCME’s state organization, Council 25, paid its legal costs.

The majority included Chief Justice Robert Young Jr. and Justices Stephen Markman, Mary Beth Kelly and Brian Zahra. Dissenting were Justices Michael Cavanagh and Bridge McCormack.

In its decision, the top court’s majority says that there was no “mutual commitment” that the board would continue the old table, and the board had the discretion to do it, according to the case’s “syllabus” prepared by “the reporter of decisions.”

The minority says the commission “knew” that the old method was not equivalent and that it amended the ordinance to set the interest rate and information that refereed to the old mortality table, the syllabus says.